After lunch
When Miss Jasmine finished her nap, she came out and found Larry and Rosemary sitting on the couch, looking at each other and smiling.
“Larry was just telling me about some books, Miss Jasmine.”
“Uh huh,” she said. “Larry the damn librarian. Now you two fools move so I can do my squats and sit on the couch.”
As they got up, Kenneth and McArdle came back in and went to their usual seats. Miss Jasmine said:
“I’ve told more this week than in my entire life, except to Leopold, Roberta A., and Kat of course. My soul is tired. Larry, can you tell us about the sit-ins, please?”
Larry cleared his throat.
“I like the way you explained the rape,” Larry said, looking into Rosemary’s eyes.
“That’s a hell of a thing to say for a man to say to a woman. You like the way I explained the rape? What did you like about it?”
“I’m sorry, that didn’t come out right. The rape is such a complicated story, with so many details, and you previewed it like a play, with only a few paragraphs per act. Straight to the point and then filled out a few details. I am going to try to bullet point the main acts of the sit-ins and other demonstrations.
“In my version of the sit-ins, the Stephens sisters came to FAMU in 1957. By 1959, they were involved in CORE, which was a civil rights group advocating the dismantling of segregation. In 1960, the sisters were arrested for a lunch counter demonstration with several other students at Woolworths, some of them white students from Florida State University. Eventually they were tried and convicted by Judge Judd; there was no jury. The students were fined and released with the jail time of three months they had already served. Judge Judd gave them a moralizing lecture about the sanctity of upholding good race relations.
“By 1963, the Stephens sisters were arrested several more times; in a second lunch counter demonstration, and once for having the audacity to enter the Florida Theater to watch a movie. Each time they were arrested by Chief Ortega’s men and put in the clink by Judge Judd.
“During this time, Patricia Stevens had been part of a protest that was tear-gassed by the police. Since then, Miss Stephens always wore her trademark sunglasses to protect her damaged eyes. Those sunglasses made her stand out.
“During this time, the Stephens sisters spent months traveling around the country sponsored by CORE and advocating for basic equality. The Stephens sisters became emblematic of the desegregation movement nationally; Patricia with her dark glasses protesting in front of the theater or protesting somewhere.
“It’s nice to have her pictures to crystalize and symbolize these years, because there are so many layers to this whole story. Too many layers to go over in such a short space. As Miss Jasmine likes to say, too many footnotes, Here’s a list of main points.
“By the early 1960s, there starts to be more interaction among white and black university students, and both are involved in the lunch counter sit-ins and other desegregation protests.
“There are three groups hugely involved in strategy and lawsuits, CORE, the NAACP, and the ICC. Within these groups, there is not always total agreement regarding strategy. But generally, even though the buses have been desegregated for some years, the crux of the issue is the same: Blacks want to be treated as citizens, while the white status quo says segregation should be maintained so there can be social order and good relations between races. They seem to emphasize these good relations by physically harassing protesters and repeatedly throwing FAMU and Florida State students in jail.
“Chief of Police Ortega at the behest of the mayor is responsible for coordinating police supervision over demonstrations. This includes the tear gas incident, in which is well documented and well witnessed that Chief Ortega allowed white citizens armed with boards and ax handles to harass unarmed black protesters.
The city commission is basically in sync with the white community, so there is a triumvirate of …”
“Wait a minute, try who?” said Kenneth.
“Triumvirate. You never heard of that word before?”
“Hell, no.” Kenneth saw Aunt Jasmine scowl.
“I mean, no I’ve never heard it. You’re supposed to be the librarian; could you please tell me what it means?”
“It means three individuals or groups who hold power together. So, the city commission, Judge Judd, and Chief Ortega,” said Rosemary.
“Rosemary,” Larry said, “I’m telling the damn story here, and I’m the librarian. I’ll explain the words.”
“Excuse me? A woman doesn’t have the right to talk? Just the right to follow what men say?” said Rosemary.
“Amen, sister!” chimed in Miss Jasmine. “Now, Larry, you can make your own decisions about throwing tomatoes at my male guests. But I won’t have your chauvinistic attitude in or out of my house! Do you understand me, young man?”
“Yes, Miss Jasmine, I understand. Rosemary, I apologize for my chauvinist comments. Thank you for defining triumvirate for Kenneth.”
Kenneth looked confused again.
“Ha ha!” said Rosemary. “Kenneth, chauvinism means acting like women are naturally less important than men. Like Larry here. And this is rich: Now Larry the Librarian is apologizing to me, after I apologized to him. I guess we are even. Now, Larry, can you please continue? That was interesting.”
“Ahem. So, from about 1960 until the end of segregated schools in 1970, you have this triumvirate of the city commission, Judge Judd, and law enforcement. Chief Ortega is getting old; he retired in 1968 and died in 1972.”
“My mother always told me don’t speak ill of the dead,” said Miss Jasmine. “Good, he dead!”
Everybody looked at Miss Jasmine. “Thanks for the comments from the peanut gallery,” said Larry.
“It’s called the peanut gallery for a reason,” said Rosemary. Some theaters that allowed black people made them sit in poor seats in the balcony, and at their risk the black people would throw peanut shells down on the white people.”
“Thank you, Miss Patricia Stevens. May I continue? If you can hear me up in your crap seat in the peanut gallery?”
“You got two women up here in this peanut gallery, Jackass, so be careful what you say,” said Miss Jasmine.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Besides what I already mentioned there are more details of interactions between professors of FAMU and Florida State; between academic administrators and presidents of both universities, not to mention CORE, the NAACP, and the ICC. Within groups like CORE, ICE, and the NAACP, there are a lot of smaller currents. The presidents of Florida State University and of FAMU had to navigate local and statewide politics along with principle. Plus, there was a gradual mixing of white students with black students. You could see the page turning on segregation so to speak, but it was turning very slowly.
“Additionally, in 1960 there was a gubernatorial race between the favorite Farris Bryant, who represented the statewide status quo, and the slightly more liberal incumbent Leroy Collins, who was accused by the Bryant camp of being an ‘integrationist.’
“Finally, you have the local white business owners who were starting to get fed up being required to follow cumbersome segregation rules. This was similar to the bus company having to take orders from the city commission during the bus boycott. Taking place of the bus company was a new private entity, Woolworths, the national five-and-dime chain with corporate offices in New York City. These local businesses had to act like they were following orders from the triumvirate. But ultimately, they didn’t want to alienate customers. Black people.
“To illustrate the thinking of the triumvirate, I’m going to see if I can paraphrase what Judge Judd told the students when he was sentencing them in 1960. If I were Miss Jasmine, I’d be able to remember word for word, but I need to reconstruct it in my own way.”
Miss Jasmine just smiled.
“Judge Judd told the students they were disturbing the community. He said they knew they were not welcome at Woolworths and protested anyway, causing the arrests. He even claimed the Bible did not permit black people to intimidate white citizens. The Bible!”
“If I may, Larry,” said Miss Jasmine. “You know I’ve read the Bible countless times in Portuguese, and I’ve got it memorized. The Bible doesn’t say anything about intimidating citizens or talk about black people or white people.”
“I was paraphrasing, Miss Jasmine.”
“Not even in a paraphrase does the Bible mention intimidation or black people. Maybe that fool judge should read it in Portuguese. Now go on, please, Larry.”
“Well, Miss Jasmine, Judge Judd also warned the students if they continued to protest, they would be following in the footsteps of Castro and Cuba. May I ask if Castro and Cuba are anywhere in the Bible?”
Everybody just laughed.
“Not in the Portuguese Bible, hell no!” said Miss Jasmine.
“Judge Judd fined them all $300 apiece or they could spend sixty days in jail.
“That’s most of what I have to say really. There was all this back-and-forth and all kinds of negotiations and consultations between all these groups until about 1970. That’s when the Supreme Court put their foot down and demanded that all the southern schools integrate, sixteen years after Brown versus Board of Education.”
“In 1970 me and Sam…” Kenneth started.
“Sam and I,” corrected Miss Jasmine.
“Yes, ma’am,” Kenneth continued. “Sam and I both were in fifth grade at Kat Sulleman in 1970. We had the same teacher—the meanest teacher you can imagine. Funny, her name was Roberta Roberts. Mrs. Roberts didn’t seem to like black kids and didn’t like white kids either. Really, she just didn’t like kids and couldn’t handle teaching at a segregated school and then having black children thrown in her face.”
“Do you remember what we used to do after school?” McArdle asked Kenneth.
“Yeah, all the black kids lived in Frenchtown in rundown shacks. Froze our butts off in the winter and scared our houses would catch fire from the fireplace. Your house was halfway between school and Frenchtown. We would stop at your house and play football or baseball in the side yard. Ten or fifteen of us—you were the only white kid. Scrawny, but I remember you could evade people so were good at returning punts until we knocked your block off. Your mother would come out and serve us something to drink and maybe a snack.
“When we left your house, we had to walk past the governor’s mansion to go home. We lived in shacks; the governor lived in a mansion.”
“That’s about right,” said Sam. “What you don’t know is that the old lady across the street called my mother on the phone and asked her, ‘Roberta,’—remember my mother’s name was Roberta—‘Why on earth are all of those…”
McArdle stopped and looked at Miss Jasmine. “I don’t think I should say what she told my mother, Miss Jasmine.”
Miss Jasmine said, “You mean you don’t want to tell us that the lady asked your mother, ‘Who are all those little n—s playing football with Sammy in the side yard?’”
“Yes, ma’am, that’s approximately what the neighbor said. She was good friends with the mayor’s widow two doors down. Yes, that mayor. My mother also told me I should never use that word no matter what the circumstances were.”
“Well, it sounds like y’all had an interesting time in school, don’t we all? Maybe you’d like to tell the next story, Mr. McArdle—I mean Sam.”
“That will be my privilege,” said Sam.
Rosemary thought about being wiseass and saying, ‘You mean it will be your white privilege, hee hee.”
Instead, Rosemary bit her lip and said, “Larry, I appreciate your explanation. But I would like to point something out.”
“What’s that, Rosemary?”
“Well, it may not be the most significant detail, but Patricia Stephens wrote a letter from the jail, just like Martin Luther King Jr. She had to smuggle the letter out. She was able to get Jackie Robinson to publish it. He had a column in the New York Post. Home run!”
“Smuggle it out? Now just how did she smuggle it out?” asked Larry.
“In her underwear, of course,” said Miss Jasmine. “You’d have to be a fool or a jackass or both to not know that!”
Whale ran to the door, looking at Larry to take her out.
Miss Jasmine said to Rosemary, “I call Larry fool and jackass, but I don’t know how I could manage Whale without him. Up and down those goddamn steps, eight of them several times a day. Well, I guess I’ll do my squats now.”